The name is a bit of a mouthful, but as well as being phenomenally fast the
convertible Gallardo is a real treat for the ears.

The last time I drove a Lamborghini was four years ago, from my wedding to the reception. I poured myself and my big white dress into a Gallardo, shoving the lace train unceremoniously under the steering wheel while my husband squeezed nervously into the passenger seat.

Our guests surrounded the car, some of the smaller ones bursting into tears when I revved the engine outside the church, and off we roared to the reception. It was a moment of theatrical madness, which my mother strongly disapproved of, but it was the visual and aural highlight of the day, and years later there are pictures on mantelpieces of my guests casually leaning over the bonnet in proprietorial fashion with the disco in full swing behind them.

Mad, fun, impractical, brilliant, inappropriate, anachronistic… that’s what supercars are all about, and the Lamborghini LP 570-4 Spyder Performante, launched last November to complete the Gallardo range (well, until unleashing the race-bred Super Trofeo Stradale at the Frankfurt motor show last month) is one of the most bonkers.

It’s a Weightwatchers Gallardo, having shed 65kg (143lb) through a carbon-fibre diet. The result is a lot of the dark mesh decorating the inside of the car and the body, including the wing mirrors, combined with some staggering performance figures from the 570bhp V10 engine: 0-62mph in 3.9sec and a top speed of 201mph.

Perhaps the best supercar development since I drove that Gallardo four years ago is the new Hindhead Tunnel on the A3 in Surrey. It does for supercars what Roland Mouret’s Galaxy dress did for the female figure: made it a lot sexier. Shortly after the tunnel opened, supercar owners discovered it, and where supercars go, average speed cameras follow. They cover the length of the tunnel, but it’s not speed that the tunnel best reflects; it’s noise.

Oh! The joy of that mad bark at 4,000rpm. A harsh, metallic crack that rolls into the frenzied hammering of pistons and valves as the engine surges to 8,000rpm. It’s the sort of noise that makes it very, very hard to keep your licence. In fact, the kind of speeds this car requires to come alive involve a stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

If you own one, you’d better live near a national speed limit stretch of road, because the Performante does not do low speeds from cold. Until the optional ceramic brake discs have warmed up, it feels as if there’s very little there to bring you to a halt, while small throttle inputs lurch through the e-gear automated transmission at low speeds. Parking is not the work of a moment...

But this leviathan was not built for the supermarket car park; like a truculent toddler, it scorns such places by refusing to co-operate in them. It’ll let you know when it’s happy: anything above 60mph starts to feel good, that big optional rear wing and the carbon-fibre underskirt pushing the four huge wheels into the ground, and the car starting to scythe through the air with seemingly no effort. The steering lightens and the four-wheel drive gives you gratifying reassurance, instead of detracting from the fun by deadening the feedback.

So what’s not to like? Well, the downside of VW’s corporate ownership of the marque is that, in a car that costs as much as a house, you get exactly the same switchgear for the radio and climate control as you do in a £15,000 Audi A3. Don’t people who spend £188,830 on a car deserve the same attention to detail on the inside that is given to the engine? In this regard, Astons, Jaguars and Bentleys beat the Italians hands down.

Obviously supercar makers need to save weight, but the Performante’s steering wheel was looking scuffed and tired and the steering-wheel paddles were made of nasty black plastic, as were the indicator stalks. Even the key fob was a boring VW black plastic affair.

It’s a small downer on a special car, but the devil is in the details. Still, the small detail of the thumbs-up I got from a Lotus Elise driver I passed on the A3 made up for it all.